Our take
Daniel Day-Lewis earned his breakout performance as Johnny, a reformed skinhead in this tale of interracial gay romance in Thatcher’s Britain. Gordon Warnecke plays Johnny's lover Omar, the aimless son of a Pakistani intellectual who is given a leg-up by a successful uncle when he’s put in charge of rescuing a failing laundrette in gritty South London. Remarkably, Omar and Johnny’s romance isn’t presented as all that transgressive; far more central are the experiences and attitudes towards “assimilation” of Omar’s British-Pakistani family, the elders of whom live double lives and indulge both their financial and sexual greed. My Beautiful Laundrette is transgressive in many ways, but mostly in the dizzying array of tensions it sets its sights on — racial, ideological, class, generational, and gender — an ambitious quality that can, admittedly, overwhelm at times. But ambition is an admirable flaw for a film to have, particularly one as sharp and groundbreaking as this.
Synopsis
A Pakistani Briton renovates a rundown laundrette with his male lover while dealing with drama within his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
Storyline
A young British-Pakistani drifter finds new direction in life when he reconnects with an old school friend and is tasked with reviving a dying business for his uncle.
TLDR
Way more interesting than its title — which sounds like a quirky Netflix reality show that’ll get canceled after a single season — suggests.
What stands out
A film that combines My Beautiful Laundrette’s complex subject matter and tricky tone — at once humorous and cutting — is arguably still a rare sight today. Watching it smash taboos and break new ground in all the ways it does decades later, you can’t help but lament that movies this clever and complex and radical in their focuses aren't more commonplace now.